The container vessel MSC Napoli was beached off the East Devon section of the World Heritage coast, between Sidmouth and Branscombe, on Saturday 20 January 2007.

The vessel had suffered flooding to the engine room during force 8 gales on Thursday 18 January 40 miles south of Cornwall. This occurred in International waters within the French Search and Rescue zone. The 26 crew abandoned ship and were safely rescued from their lifeboat by helicopter. Following discussions between the UK and French authorities and assessments about suitable places of refuge, a decision was taken to tow the vessel to a place of refuge in UK waters.

The MSC Napoli was carrying some 2,400 containers and 3,600 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. The worsening condition of the vessel was such that while under tow in bad weather to Portland for repairs, a decision to beach and ballast the MSC Napoli about 1 mile east of Sidmouth was taken by the Transport Secretary of State’s Representative to minimise the impact of any pollution from the vessel's cargo.

Over 100 containers were lost overboard that night, more were lost in subsequent poor weather, a large number of these came ashore at Branscombe and nearby beaches, with results that were well documented in the media. Oil escaping from the vessel was minimised, but some found its way ashore, mostly drifting eastwards towards Dorset (a number of containers had also floated that far).

The incident triggered a major inter-agency operation led by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and presented significant challenges both at sea and on land including public order and traffic management issues caused by the substantial influx of people to Branscombe intent on removing items of cargo washed ashore.

The beach, coastal footpaths and roads in Branscombe were fully re-opened shortly before Easter 2007. The fuel tanks were emptied and the bow section of the Napoli was removed in August to Belfast for recycling with work then commencing on removing the stern section in two phases. The 675 tonne accommodation block was removed in November and it was hoped that phase one would be complete by the end of January, 2008, with the second phase, which is reliant on good weather conditions, commencing at the end of March, this year.

However, severe winter gales halted phase one operations and these have been postponed pending the arrival of better weather in the spring. As a consequence, it is anticipated that the final removal of the MSC Napoli and the ongoing shoreline and marine clean-up operations will take longer than first planned.

This latest chapter in the MSC Napoli incident underlines that throughout the degree of risk involved in this complex operation has been contingent upon the weather conditions. In that respect Devon and Dorset were fortunate that the weather was not more severe during the early stages 12 months ago when the Napoli was still heavily laden with containers and oil.